Introduction
There has been a bit of buzz in the tech community about the resurrection of the Pebble Smartwatch. Eric Migicovsky’s post about bringing the watch back, and his postmortem on his previous experience with bringing the watch to market are quite compelling. I do believe he has accounted for the previous failure of the company, and set reasonable expectations for reviving the brand.
However, a few points in Eric’s post gave me a bit of pause. For example, the statement “You’d imagine that smartwatches have evolved considerably since 2012.” Well, yes, in the 12 years since the original Pebble quite a few things have changed.
As I read further, I got the feeling that maybe this project hadn’t really been thought out all that well. Maybe it was just an immediate reaction to Google making the PebbleOS code Open Source. That is a good place to start, but I think this project needs to be thought about in a different light.
The Smartwatch market is now largely a duopoly between Samsung and Apple, with everyone else (Garmin, Fitbit, Amazfit and a host of Chinese brands) sweeping up the crumbs behind them. So, what is it going to take for the new Pebble to not be sweeping alongside all the others, and instead find itself a solid place in the market?
I do not claim to be an expert in the field of smartwatches, watches or horology. However, over the past year I have learned quite a bit as I stumbled my way into collecting watches. So, I’d like to provide some opinions on what would really set the new Pebble apart from the competition.
My Journey Into Watch Collecting
As I stated in the introduction, I started collecting watches about a year ago. Most of my collection has focuses on Japanese watches: Casio, Seiko, Citizen, Kuoe, Orient, etc. But why watches? And why Japanese watches? The answer to that lays in the research I did before I started buying watches.
Initially I interested in hybrid watches. A hybrid watch was a typical quartz watch with the face replaced with an LCD panel that could display various information. This allowed the watch to be used for displaying notifications, health tracking, etc. while still having the appearance of a mechanical watch.
I quickly found that the hybrid watch market wasn’t surviving the onslaught of Apple’s and Samsung’s Smartwatches. Most of the watch manufacturers were discontinuing their hybrid watches, and many were narrowing their smartwatch offerings.
So, I started looking at Smartwatches. But as I dug into them I found most of them were using Google’s WearOS. And while WearOS supports encrypting the communication between the watch and phone, I had every reason to believe there were API endpoints going to Google. And, since the device would be tethered to an Android phone, that meant my personal medical information could be used by Google for whatever purposes they see fit.
But still, I thought it might be worth the risk if I could mitigate the potential issue through other means. Then I started looking at the applications these watches supported. Many of them required a subscription to really have full functionality.
At this point, the little enthusiasm I had for smartwatches was quickly waning. Then the final nail in the coffin came when I started looking at the applications. So many of them literally state that they are sending your information to third parties for marketing and other purposes, even (especially?) after the user signs up for a subscription. This is insane in my opinion. It would be one thing if my information was being sent to my health provider, I would be okay with that. But to suggest that it is going to be sent to anyone else for any purpose is a non-starter.
The fact is that medical professionals have a set of laws known as HIPPA which they have to comply with. This limits the exposure of your personal and medical information. However, the companies providing these applications are not bound by these laws, so there is nothing to ensure your privacy when using them.
And, that was it, I mentally snapped a bit. I didn’t want to wade any further into a minefield where my most personal information was going to be put at risk, all for the benefit of a bunch of corporations to do God knows what with the information.
Aside: A story from about 10 years ago has been stuck in my mind… A teenager found out she was pregnant and went to Target to buy prenatal vitamins. She used her mother’s credit card to buy the vitamins. She didn’t tell her parents that she was pregnant. Target used the information from the credit card to generate a list of pregnant women to send marketing to… Target sent a “Congratulations on your Pregnancy” flier addressed to the other to the teenager’s house. This was how the parents found out that their teenage daughter was pregnant. A truly disgusting show of the invasion of privacy that companies will do if they think it will generate more revenue for them.
Watch Collecting: A Few Lessons
So, in rejecting the technology of the current smartwatch minefield, I still felt that I wanted something to differentiate myself. I wanted to wear something on my wrist to tell the time, if nothing else, so I didn’t have to pull out my phone just to check the time.
I started with a nostalgia pick: the Casio AE1200, aka the Casio Royale after the watch that appeared in the James Bond film “Octopussy”. (The film watch was actually a Seiko G757, which is no longer in production.) But, I didn’t want to wear a digital watch all the time — it just felt a bit too nerdy. So, I started buying other watches: other Casio’s, some Timex’s, a Citizen and a Seiko.
I decided (somewhat mistakenly) to focus on collecting Casio watches. Why Casio? Well, I noticed something quirky and challenging about Casio. They tend to only partially release some of their watches in the North American market. For example, the AQ-230: there are four models released in North America, but on Casio’s International website there are thirteen variants of this watch.
And that seemed like a fun challenge to me: find Casio watches that either (a) weren’t available in the North American market, or (b) had limited releases in North America, and find ways to acquire the whole line. This was going to be the “fun” part of my collection.
But I was also going to have a more serious collection. Initially, I watched a lot of YouTube watch collecting videos. Many of the watches were impressive: the fit, finish and aesthetics of watches from Breguet, Audemars Piguet, Rolex, Cartier, Breitling, IWC, Omega, Patek Philippe, etc. were amazing. But the prices were outrageous. Entry level prices for many of them were $10,000, or something close to it. And, these were watches with automatic mechanical movements… Meaning that they need to be wound, either by wearing them, or using an external device to wind them for you. And because they were mechanical they would need routine servicing (just like a car), and from what I gathered the servicing was expensive.
But that wasn’t the biggest issue I had while watching these videos. There was this sense of snobbery from both the video creators, and the viewers (commenters) on the videos. As I pieced things together, there was a whole historical context for this snobbery, and the growth of what I deemed to be an unhealthy community. (Something I will talk about in a separate piece.)
Now, this whole background has gotten a bit long, but bear with me for a couple of more paragraphs to get to a few points…
While I was learning about other watches, my Casio collection started growing, and I came to a couple of really interesting models. The first was the MTP-RS100D. These are simple three hand watches, but they have a few interesting features. The first is watch face. It’s completely unique, not imitating any other watches that I had (or have) seen. Second, it’s a solar watch, with the ability to store enough energy to operate for four months between charges. (Typical automatic watches can only store enough energy for 40-70 hours of operation without winding.) And the price was under $100. Admittedly there are some not-so-positive aspects to the watch. For example the bracelet isn’t all that high quality, and replacing it is difficult due to the way it integrates into the case. Also, I wish it had a date complication (or even more a day and date complication), but some see the lack of this kind of complication to be a positive. The clasp isn’t all that good either. And it has a mineral glass crystal instead of sapphire. But, for under $100 it is above and beyond the value of many $500 and even $1000 watches.
Then came the absolute bombshell watch for me: the Casio Lineage LCW-M100TS. This is a hybrid “AnaDigi” watch, meaning that it’s face is that of an analog watch, but it incorporates a digital display. Honestly, I initially didn’t like a lot of the “AnaDigi” watches until I saw this one. This watch has a similar look to the MTP-RS100D, but the dial features a simple sunburst pattern, and the integrated LCD panel. But, that’s not the impressive part of this watch…it’s all of the features that it has: World time, Timer, Full auto-calendar (up to 2099), Backlight, Solar (with an energy saving feature that allows it to operate for up to 22 months on a single charge), Stopwatch, Alarm(s), Atomic clock synchronizing, automatic timezone adjustment. And then there is the case and bracelet: all titanium, with a sapphire crystal. The price? Depending on the variant $150-$200 USD. Lineage watches are a “JDM” (Japanese Domestic Market) line of watches. So, getting them imported and still being a fraction of the price of similar watches from Seiko, Citizen, and others is quite remarkable. Not to mention that they are fraction of the price of many Swiss and European watches, and are just generally a more solid value. (There are some other things that I will discuss in another article that put them above literally any other mechanical watch.)
Of course, these are not smartwatches. They don’t have health tracking sensors, and they don’t integrate with your phone for notifications, or media control, or anything like that. However, from my perspective it’s important to actually place smartwatches in the context to the broader watch market, as will become clear throughout the remainder of this article.
Now, there is a Casio-shaped elephant that I am not covering here: the G-Shock line. They are really forerunner to the smartwatch, having many of the features that the Pebble is focused on bringing out. And, in fact, they also have models that incorporate some of the important features of the above watches. But, their AnaDigi watches don’t look as nice as the Lineage to me, and I personally didn’t want to wear a digital watch all the time…so I haven’t gone too far into them yet (although I do have an GBD-200).
Next we have to talk about the Apple-shaped elephant of the smartwatch world: the Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch Is More Impressive Than You Know
The disruption to watchmaking caused by the Apple Watch was not a completely new event in the annals of watchmaking. The first such event was the Christmas Surprise of 1969 when Seiko released the Astron: the first mass market quartz watch. The Astron achieved a greater accuracy than the majority of mechanical watches, and was able to run for up to a year on a single battery. Something no mechanical watch could achieve.
This event sent shock waves through the Swiss and European watchmaking industries, but many watchmakers seemingly ignored the importance of the watch. Within a few years the mechanical watches had lost a large portion of their market share as quartz watches became easier to manufacture, were more readily available to the public, and were much less expensive than mechanical watches.
This caused a large scale reorganization, consolidation and refocusing of the mechanical watchmaking industry. Instead of being the ubiquitous objects that many people needed, they became niche objects and luxury items.
Then just 45 years after the release of the Astron, Apple released the first Apple Watch. In a few short years, the Apple Watch’s market share grew to an astonishing level, taking the majority share of quartz watch market (both analog and digital watches), as well as many of the health tracking devices, and further eroding a portion of the luxury mechanical watchmaking industry. (Apple managed to out-sell all Swiss watchmakers combined in 2020.)
Many watchmakers, and watch collectors and aficionados dismissed the Apple Watch as not being a real or serious watch. There are several reasons for this: (a) the device doesn’t “feel” like a watch, (b) they don’t see it’s primary use is as a timekeeping device, instead focusing on other functions like health monitoring, media control, and notification display, as well as a myriad of other applications the watches can run, and (c) the fact that it is tethered to a cell phone to provide much of this functionality.
And while certainly all of this is true, it is a way to dodge the fact that Apple went to great lengths to make the Apple Watch a timekeeping piece that exceeds COSC certification standards, and most of the quartz watches on the market. In an article in Mashable from 2015 (Here’s how Apple synchronized all your Apple Watches), Apple’s VP of Technology, Kevin Lynch, outlined a number of the features of the Apple Watch that are fairly impressive.
First, the Apple Watch does actually have a self-contained quartz movement. Next, in order to maintain that accuracy they curated their own global network of Stratum One NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers (these servers are only a single step away from an atomic clock). Third they implemented a temperature control crystal oscillator to compensate for changes in temperature. The end result is the Apple Watch is accurate within 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) of Universal Standard Time. While this might not sound impressive consider that typical quartz watches from Casio are accurate to approximately +/- 20 seconds per month (which is around 0.5 seconds a day), and COSC Certified mechanical watches average −4/+6 seconds per day. (Ed. Note: the article doesn’t mention the quartz movement. However, the crystal oscillator temperature control is only necessary if there is a quartz movement.)
Certainly, there are quartz watches that rival the Apple watch in terms of accuracy. In fact, there are some watches that actually have their own miniaturized atomic clocks built into them, which are considered to be the most accurate in the world, but they are also exceptionally expensive (the Hoptrof No. 16 was $24,000 in 2015).
Now with all this context, lets talk about the Pebble and some of the issues that it faces.
Reviving The Pebble Smartwatch
The Pebble smartwatch was definitely ahead of it’s time in 2013 when it came to market (after doing a Kickstarter fundraising campaign in 2012). It actually hit the market two years before the Apple Watch, so it’s only real competition were some of the wearable devices from the likes of IBM, Sony Ericson, and Fossil (amongst other early attempts at bringing smartwatches to market in the 1990’s and 2000’s).
Today, however, I think it is best to take a long look at both the Smartwatch and Wristwatch markets to identify the key items that a revived Pebble should try to achieve. Here is the list of things that I would want rePebble to consider as they work on reviving their Smartwatch:
- Power usage / recharging
- Privacy & App Issues
- Standalone usage Vs. Tethering
- Timekeeping Accuracy
- There is still a Pebble
Let’s take a look at each of these topics.
There Is Still a Pebble Smartwatch
I hadn’t mentioned this so far, but while researching and gathering materials for writing this piece, I came across a website for a company that still is selling watches under the Pebble brand. This doesn’t appear to some fly-by-night operation either. My guess would be that through the long process of properties being split up and sold off this company somehow ended up with the right to use the Pebble name.
The company appears to be in Bengaluru, India. I don’t personally know the status of India when it comes to copyright, trademarks, or other so-called “intellectual property” issues, it would seem to me that it would likely be best to avoid a situation where there could be a conflict. Don’t really want to see lawyers having to get involved in some form of international trademark legal fight before you’ve even gotten your product to market.
Power Usage
The current state of cellphone and smartwatch power usage is absolute insanity to me. The fact that most of these devices need to be charged via a cable or “wireless” connection is utterly ridiculous. Solar wristwatches have existed since 1972 (The History of Solar Powered Watches). Over the past 50 years, the advancements in solar technology by Seiko, Casio and especially Citizen have made it to the point where there’s no need to make adjustments to many of these watches for months at a time.
Now, I know you might be thinking “but the power requirements of a smartwatch are different from a wristwatch”, and I would partially agree with that. However, when we look at hybrid watches they have a fairly intense power usage to actually run a motor to move a second hand, which could deplete the battery. So, look at watches like the Casio Lineage watch mentioned above: it will sleep at night in order to preserve the power it would use to run the motor… But it still keeps the other internal functions operational so it is always in sync.
The advancements in microprocessor manufacturing (getting down to 4nm process nodes) along with the advancements SoC technology should enable the Pebble to go a lot further than it has in the past.
The lowered power consumption of embedded processors and SoC’s, along with improvements in solar technology and energy storage should allow creating a device that can recharge itself from available light on a daily basis. And, given that most customers will likely wear these watches daily, there shouldn’t be an issue.
I do understand that there will be technical challenges to this decision. But even those challenges likely have solutions. We have sleep modes, connections can be closed when not in use, etc. I don’t think those challenges should prevent creating a smartwatch that is solar powered.
Privacy Issues
As I noted above, one of the biggest issues I had with many of the Smartwatches on the market today were the fitness tracking applications. The amount of information that the user is having to give up in order to track their health information is insane.
If there is going to be a specific app for the new Pebble, please make it open source. Also, please contribute to the exist open source applications that are available (one of the best seems to be Gadgetbridge, which I’m guessing you are aware of since it has Pebble support).
I think the biggest thing to do in this area is: develop the new Pebble as a privacy respecting application. Do not place your customers in the position of having a recommended application that will sell their information. This is something that is worth emphasizing in announcements regarding the device. And, reaching out to privacy respecting open source applications as you work through the development process will help generate more good will.
Standalone Usage
While one of the more appealing aspects to smartwatch customers is the ability to tether their watch to their phone to enable some extended functionality, the new Pebble should make it a priority to be a “watch” at it’s core before being “smart”.
Let me explain my thought process here. The wristwatch market has created devices that have stood the test of time, quite literally. There are watches from the 1500’s that are still in existence today (although whether they are functional, or accurate is another matter). We regularly see watches that are 50-100 years old that are still functioning.
Today many smartwatches (and cellphones) are seen as disposable devices. Every few years people run out to buy the latest Samsung Galaxy watch or Apple Watch because of “cool new feature X”. And many of the old devices end up in landfills.
But, this doesn’t need to be the case. Yes, adding new features and releasing new devices is part of the business cycle. But committing to a longer lifespan is something to aspire to.
There are two ways to do this: (1) develop the firmware and software in a manner that allows for older devices to be updated, and (2) design the hardware and software in a manner that it can have minimal functionality past it’s EOL as a smart device.
In other words: focus on the watch functionality. Even when the device cannot support being tethered to a phone anymore, let it exist as a top-quality wrist watch. Have it use GPS and Atomic Clock radio signals to keep time in sync. Have built in timers, alarms, stop watch, perpetual calendar, etc. features.
I have this extreme scenario in the back of my head when it comes to wristwatches: how useful is a watch going to be if the national infrastructure were to disappear? What if I can’t get batteries for my watches? What if there is no one to service a mechanical movement? How long could my watch last and be useful?
This is where I think design choices are important. Solar charging allows the use of a watch for probably a good ten to twenty years without batteries. Making a digital quartz movement removes the need for maintenance of the movement. Being able to sync to an atomic clock via radio signal (not over the internet) means I should have accuracy for a while (the military radios aren’t likely to go offline immediately).
Even if that kind of scenario doesn’t happen, a smartwatch that can function without a phone is still useful. It can be passed down to family members, especially children who don’t need to have all the smartwatch functionality.
This is the kind of thought and design that will make for a device that will be able to last for a long time.
Timekeeping Accuracy
I mentioned this above, and these two points are actually interconnected. A smartwatch should be able to keep more accurate time than a cellphone. This should be somewhat obvious: runners and joggers will want to have accurate times for their activities. Anyone that needs to use a stopwatch will want it to be as accurate as possible.
It takes more than just a simple quartz movement to enable this functionality. Syncing the time to an atomic clock, accounting for drift and skew, using temperature, altitude, air pressure and other sensors to compensate for external environmental issues that can affect the accuracy of the movement / calibre is important.
As I mentioned above, Apple spent a lot of time developing a number of these items for their Watch. While it may (or may not) be as impressive ten years after the first Apple Watch hit the shelves, the fact is that timekeeping was a core focus when developing their watch. The new Pebble should take the same approach, leveraging as much watchmaking knowledge and technology as possible.
Conclusion
Thank you if you have read this far. I know that it was a lot to take in, and there was a lot of thoughts that I have put on the page in the hopes that it will help to guide the developers of the new Pebble. But, I think this article can go a lot further with how we think about both watches and connected devices.
The fact is that a lot of watches have a very long life cycle. Yes, they do need maintenance – whether it’s the changing of a battery in a quartz watch, or re-calibration / maintenance of a mechanical movement.
It’s my hope, however, that this article shows anyone who is interested in watches that there is a different way to go. There is a way to have modern features and longevity, instead of treating smartwatches as disposable tech. The concept that a watch should be treated in the same manner as a piece of a fast-fashion clothing is disturbing. We can do better. We need to do better.
The new Pebble offers that opportunity.